Natural Wonders of the World

Last week I read an article regarding the global competition to name the "New 7 Wonders of Nature." The competition is coordinated by a Swiss nonprofit of the same name and is expected to draw over a billion voters via the internet (the wonder of technology!).

The nonprofit has received 441 nominations since 2007, including such natural wonders as Niagra Falls, the Great Barrier Reef, Mount Everest, Loch Ness, Zuma Rock, and the Matterhorn. The list was narrowed to 222 sites covering the globe.

Here's a link to the full article: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090106/ap_on_sc/eu7_natural_wonders

That said, what is your "natural wonder of the world"? It could be something as simple as the woods behind your own backyard.

So Leave No Trace community...what is your vote?

National Get Outdoors Day - Denver, CO

JUNE 14, 2008: DENVER COLORADO

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
May 21, 2008

Contact: [Susan Alden-Weingardt, Partnership Coordinator, USFS, Rocky Mountain Region and Co-Chair of June 14 event, 303-275-5401, salden@fs.fed.us]

Fun in the sun at Sloan’s Lake Park on National Get Outdoors Day

DENVER, Colorado, (May 21, 2008) – Governor Bill Ritter has declared June Great Outdoors Month in Colorado and President Bush has proclaimed June 14 as National Get Outdoors Day. Denver’s celebration will be a signature event highlighting the importance of enjoying our amazing outdoor recreation opportunities.

Avid4 Adventure, Denver Museum of Nature and Science, Denver Parks and Recreation, Outward Bound, REI, The US Forest Service, The National Park Service, Vail Resorts, Volunteers for Outdoor Colorado and many more sponsors will host the inaugural National Get Outdoors Day on Saturday, June 14, 2008, from 9:00 AM to 2:00 PM at Sloan’s Lake Park in Denver. Designed to become an annual summer event, National Get Outdoors Day encourages healthy, active outdoor fun. Participating partners will offer opportunities for families across the United States to experience traditional and non-traditional types of outdoor activities.

This exciting, unique event is designed to reach first-time visitors to public lands and to reconnect our youth to the great outdoors. Booths and outdoor stations will offer a variety of fun activities such as a mountain bike course, rock climbing and geocaching.

National Get Outdoors Day is an outgrowth of the Get Outdoors USA! campaign, which encourages everyone, especially our youth, to seek out healthy, active outdoor lives and embrace our parks, forests, refuges and other public lands and waters.

For more information visit www.nationalgetoutdoorsday.org. To reserve space for a booth call Bill Kight at 970-948-1894 or email bkight@fs.fed.us.

Coyote Ugly

Photo: My dad and son contemplating rocks on my parents' beach. Wonder what ended up in their pockets?

A coyote ate my parent’s cat about ten days ago. Maggie, the beloved tabby lived the life of a panther, prowling my parents grounds like a predator. She served up a heavy dose of dead birds and maimed rats to the doorstep every morning until she met her fate in the probable mouth of a coyote. Poor, unwitting Maggie became an inevitable product of the same food chain of which she so prolifically participated.

My mother looks over her garden describing the coyotes’ paths through the thick blackberry brambles and up past the house with mild grief but also a bit of wonder and exhilaration about this close brush with wildlife. She and my dad made a deliberate choice to leave Ohio and retire on a rural, verdant island on Puget Sound in Washington five years ago, bringing a rush new experiences with the natural world.

Much of what we have discussed here at Leave No Trace in recent months has been about Leave No Trace’s role in the “increasing participation in the outdoors” national discussion. We’ve talk a lot about what it takes to invest families and youth in their natural environments and when and when Leave No Trace enters that picture. For my parents, who always felt a remote connection to the outdoors even if it was merely feeling the Midwestern humidity through the screen door are, late in their lives, awash in nature and developing a new relationship to it.

They have suddenly begun a conversation with me about the ethics of dragging driftwood from their beach. My mom read Richard Louv’s Last Child in the Woods and wonders if I’m using it at work. They point out the invasive species overrunning their woods. They’re mad about the coyotes and the deer eating their tulips. My parents are the smallest case study in transformation. They have an increased relationship with their national world thus it is an enhanced, more attuned, more inquisitive one.